Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Pamela Binnings Ewen Interview, Part 2 + GIVEAWAY!!!

Welcome to Part 2 of my (unabridged) interview with the fascinating Pamela Binnings Ewen!

Serena: Chasing
the Wind is equal parts legal thriller, women’s fiction, and romance, yet
you don’t glamorize a young female associate’s busy-work responsibilities in
making that big deal come through. Are you ever irritated or amused by the way
young attorneys are portrayed in books or on film?

Pamela: Not really. I’m so used to those shark and
lawyer jokes that anything else looks good.

Serena: I’d never heard of “D.B. Cooper”, the 1971 airline
hijacker (who may or may not be a character in your novel) who was never
apprehended, until I read your book. Of course, I wasn’t born until a year after
that hijacking took place! When did this historical mystery first capture your
attention?

Pamela: Whew! The D.B. Cooper story
caught my attention right out of the box. People just went crazy. One rainy
night in 1971 when the moon was on the wane and the sky was unusually dark, a
man who called himself D.B. Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Flight out of
Portland Oregon on Thanksgiving eve. It was a Boeing 727 jet. Ten minutes into
the flight he announced that he had a bomb. Ransom demanded: $200,000 and
parachutes. The plane landed and he released the passengers, who later said he
seemed very nice, but he kept the crew. When the money arrived with the
parachutes, the plane took off. He apparently knew what he was doing. At 10,000
feet—which he’d required—he jumped, money and all, and has never been seen
since. He should have died, experts said, but there’s no evidence of that. What
a story. FBI, local police, and thousands of people combed the woods where they
thought he’d have landed, but he was gone. For a long time there were D.B.
Cooper parties held on Thanksgiving eve around the country. Several Cooper
sightings have been reported over the years—false alarms. Someone claimed to
have unraveled the mystery just a few months ago and it was in the news, but
turned out to be wrong. Now D.B. Cooper has reached legend status, so I had
lots of fun with that in the story.

Serena:
All the while Amalise is doing research I was thinking, “How did we survive
before Google searches?” In your 25
years as an attorney, what was the best improvement you saw, technologically,
to the area of legal research? And how has that transferred over to your new
profession now that you’re writing full time?

Pamela: Here’s the way it was in the 1970’s and early
1980’s: You are a young associate. Say you’re on a conference call with
numerous people on the phone and an agreement is being negotiated and you’re
the one designated to get the revised draft out to the group as quickly as
possible when the call is concluded, many hours later. You make notes on your
copy as everyone talks, and other lawyers in the room with you do too. When the
conference call is over hours later, you gather everyone’s notes, harmonize
them into one draft, then write the changes to be made by hand, sometimes
having to cut and paste. This takes many hours. You then give this thing of
beauty and joy forever to your justifiably irritable secretary, who types it. Back
again and you proof this copy, and if, as there inevitably are in this system,
corrections, you repeat the process again. When everything is fine, the typed
draft goes next to proofreaders, who sit in a big office and manually underline
each change in the revised agreement that you’ve created. Once you receive the
final product, it then goes to ‘reproduction’—which then, was a Xerox machine,
and they made copies. Now. Say you have an agreement 100 pages long (not
unusual) and fifteen people need to see the revised draft right away. That’s
1,500 sheets of paper. You and your secretary get the copies back around one or
two a.m., and then you check each set to make certain it’s complete, staple them
together, and call Federal Express. By the time Fed Ex arrives and picks up the
packages—you don’t go home until you’re certain they are out—it’s morning.

Here’s
the way it is today: You make notes on your computer while the conference
call’s going on. You do have to add notes from others in the room to your draft
after the call is over. Once you type the changes on the computer draft, you
activate the proof-reading application (tracking) and instantly the document
blacklines the revisions, showing prior language too if you desire. You email
this document to the distribution list on your computer, punch a button, and go
home. Voila! About 15 hours saved, I’d say. And a lot of trees.

As
for writing, I do all my work on a computer. My first book, Faith on Trial, was published in 1999,
and at that time I was already using a PC. The research is another story
though. I do a lot of research when I write, whether fiction or non-fiction.
But I love the research, and even though Google research is just amazing and
saves much time, I still go the library and look at old newspapers to get the
feel of the time and place, and I do a lot of reading on the subject. But
now-days, often I use Google.

Serena: A big theme in Chasing the Wind is the idea that “we are responsible not only for
the things we do, but also for the things that we don’t.” If there was one call
to action that might result from someone reading your novel, what would you
hope it would be?

Pamela: We all have to make tough choices from time
to time in life. But today we’re constantly hit with barrages of bad news and
frightening predictions, and sometimes it’s not easy to see through the flack.
But even with all of this, one person can sometimes change many lives by
choosing to act. Listen to this story a friend told to me: She was watching a
television show about an earthquake in Central America one morning. This was
one of the big, national morning shows, years ago. A film clip showed children
from an orphanage that had been damaged by the earthquake; they were playing
outside in the rain. They were little and couldn’t be cooped up in the cramped
quarters all day, the reporter said. It was cold and the children were wrapped
in blankets. But the reporter said the problem was the children had to sleep
every night in these wet blankets. Miserable. So my friend called the show and
asked if there was a fund set up for the children so she could contribute. The
person answering the phone said no, that she was the only caller. But she gave
the woman the name of a nun in charge of the orphanage and the address. The
woman sent fifty dollars to the nun, and that was that. Except, three months
later she received a letter. The nun thanked her and told her that the fifty
dollars had been used to purchase a dryer! Now each child could sleep under a
dry blanket at night.

Fifty
dollars! So, you might not think your small act will matter, but as Amalise
learned, sometimes it makes a big, big difference. I believe that God moves us in these ways.

Serena: Your nonfiction book Faith on Trial was used as one of the texts for a course at Yale
Law School in 2000. Do you foresee writing any more nonfiction, or have you
found your “home” in fiction?

Pamela: A second edition of Faith on Trial will be issued in the
fall of 2013 by my publisher, B&H Publishing Group. The new edition will
contain a ‘User’s Guild’ for readers who want to learn how to use the chain of
proof process provided there. That book is my own statement of faith and it’s now
updated and complete. So, I think I’ll stick to fiction from now on.

Serena:
Now that your latest fictional baby is out in the world, what are you working
on next?

Pamela: I’m working on a novel now that will be
released in the fall of 2013 also. It continues the story begun in Dancing on Glass and Chasing the Wind, but this one focuses
on Rebecca, Amalise’s friend at the firm. This time we have come to the
partnership question—they’re competitors now, but still friends. And an
explosive trial, and Rebecca’s fight to achieve some balance in her life.

Serena: What sort of novels do you read for pleasure?

Pamela: I guess I’m all over the place
on that one because I read all the time. Sometimes I read to learn; that’s how
I taught myself to write, with the old masters, the classics. Sometimes I just
want to relax and I’ll pick up a fast moving book that will keep me
reading—something by Phillippa Gregory, Lee Childs, Michael Connelly, Jodi
Picoult, Dee Henderson, or Erica Spindler. I think they’re all great
storytellers. I love funny books, too, like Confederacy
of Dunces. Recently I’ve found several books that I really couldn’t put
down. The Shoemaker’s Daughter, by Adriana
Trigiani, The Postmistress, by Sarah
Blake, and Rules of Civility, by Amor
Towels (amazing this is her first novel!).

Serena: Is there anything else you’d like to share
with our HEA readers?

Pamela: Amalise Catoir is thrilled her book is out.
She was tied in knots after that last scene with Phillip in Dancing on Glass, and wants me to ask
everyone reading Chasing the Wind if
they think she’s earned that second chance. Sorry. I’ve tried talking to her,
but she doesn’t know she’s not supposed to come out of the book and interrupt
our discussion. But she’s getting a little irritable now. Hold on a minute,
please.

Hmmm.
Well, all right.

Serena? Amalise also
wants me to tell everyone that she’s out now, and wants to really dance. I
suggested to her that if she just sticks to the area around Jackson Square that
would be all right. A character stepping out of her book’s a little unusual,
but probably around here no one will even notice.

One lucky reader will win a copy of CHASING THE WIND. All you have to do is leave a comment on THIS post with your spam-free contact info (jane dot doe at jmail dot com)! The winner will be selected using www.random.org. Contest is open to residents of the continental United States only (sorry. Going broke on postage, international folks.) and will run through October 15, 2012.

I really enjoyed this interview. Chasing the Wind sounds like a great book. Does Dancing on Glass need to be read first or can Chasing the Wind stand alone, even though it has some of the same characters?Thanks for the giveaway.

I think your reading experience would be enhanced and you would understand the characters better by reading Dancing on Glass first, Pam. That being said, I have not read it and, apart from a few hiccups in the beginning that were later explained, I really liked Chasing the Wind.

So while I would recommend reading book 1 prior to book 2, it isn't absolutely necessary.

And Norma -- that pic by the alligator sign is priceless, isn't it? I found it on Pamela's blog.